Rating dump doomed market

READING Cinemas (“Carpark shuts its
doors”, Leader, January 7) has little incentive to
improve the old Moonee Ponds Market dustbowl.

Moonee Valley Council's former commissioners sold the site, and
then dumped the site value rating system inherited from
the old Essendon and Keilor councils.

In dumping this rating, the commissioners gave an incentive to
land-banking owners to demolish improvements (to get a downward
revaluation and a rates reduction subsidised by the rest of us) and to
provide us Moonee Ponds shoppers with an urban wasteland.

The 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005 and 2008 councils left the
demolition-revaluation incentive in place, despite the obvious policy
fiasco imposed on the Moonee Valley community.

If the newly elected council wants to see the site developed in
accordance with Planning Scheme Amendment C100 (supported by the 2008
council) without spending our hard-earned rates funds to compulsorily
acquire the site, the council can get rid of the
demolition-revaluation incentive by reintroducing site value
rating.

If the council does not, it will just invite Reading and others to
sit on their land-value increases when Amendment C100 is gazetted.